Читать книгу Life of Father Hecker - Walter Elliott - Страница 23

WHAT influenced Isaac Hecker to leave Brook Farm, a place so congenial in many ways to his natural dispositions, was, plainly enough, his tendency to seek a more ascetic and interior life than he could lead there. The step cost him much, but he had received all that the place and his companions could give him, and his departure was inevitable.

His next move in pursuit if his ideal took him to Fruitlands. This was a farm, situated near Harvard, in Worcester Co., Massachusetts, which had been bought by Mr. Charles Lane, an English admirer of Amos Bronson Alcott, with the hope of establishing on it a new community in consonance with the views and wishes of the latter. Perhaps Fruitlands could never, at any stage of its existence as a corporate home for Mr. Alcott's family and his scanty following of disciples, have been truly described as in running order, but when Isaac Hecker went there, on July 11, 1843, it was still in its incipiency. He had paid the Fruitlanders a brief visit toward the end of June, and thought that he saw in them evidences of "a deeper life." It speaks volumes for his native sagacity and keen eye for realities, that less than a fortnight's residence with Mr. Alcott should have sufficed to dispel this illusion.

Bronson Alcott seems to have been by nature what the French call a poseur; or, as one of his own not unkindly intimates has described him, "an innocent charlatan." Although not altogether empty, he was vain; full of talk which had what was most often a false air of profundity; unpractical and incapable in the ordinary affairs of life to a degree not adequately compensated for by such a grasp as he was able to get on the realities that underlie them; and with an imposing aspect which corresponded wonderfully well with his interior traits. That, in his prime, his persuasive accents and bland self-confidence, backed by the admiration felt and expressed for him by men such as Emerson, and some of the community at Brook Farm, should have induced an open-minded youth like Isaac Hecker to take him for a time at his own valuation, is not strange. The truth is, that it was one of Father Hecker's life-long traits to prove all things, that he might find the good and hold fast to it. There was an element of justice in his make-up which enabled him to suspend judgment upon any institution or person, however little they seemed to deserve such consideration, until he was in a condition to decide from his own investigations. We shall see, later on, how he tried all the principal forms of Protestantism before deciding upon Catholicity, strong as his tendency toward the Church had become. We have never known any other man who, without exhibiting obstinacy, could so steadfastly reserve his judgment on another's statement, especially if it were in the nature of a condemnation.

When Isaac Hecker first made his acquaintance, Mr. Alcott had but recently returned from England, whither he had gone on the invitation of James P. Greaves, a friend and fellow-laborer of the great Swiss educator, Pestalozzi. Mr. Alcott had gained a certain vogue at home as a lecturer, and also as the conductor of a singular school for young children. Among its many peculiarities was that of carrying "moral suasion" to such lengths, as a solitary means of discipline, that the master occasionally publicly submitted to the castigation earned by a refractory urchin, probably by way of reaching the latter's moral sense through shame or pity. This was, doubtless, rather interesting to the pupils, whether or not it was corrective. Mr. Alcott's peculiarities did not stop here, however, and Boston parents, when he began to publish the Colloquies on the Gospels which he held with their children, concluded, on the evidence thus furnished, that his thought was too "advanced" to make it prudent to trust them longer to his care. Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, since so well known as an expositor of the Kindergarten system, had been his assistant. She wrote a Record of Mr. Alcott's School which attracted the attention of a small band of educational enthusiasts in England. They gave the name of "Alcott House" to a school of their own at Ham, near London, and hoped for great things from the personal advice and presence of the "Concord Plato." He was petted and fêted among them pretty nearly to the top of his bent; but his visit would have proved a more unalloyed success if the hard Scotch sense of Carlyle, to whom Emerson had recommended him, had not so quickly dubbed his vaunted depths deceptive shallows.

On his return he was accompanied by two Englishmen who seemed to be like-minded with himself, a Mr. H. G. Wright and Mr. Charles Lane, both of whom returned within a year or two to their own country, wiser and perhaps sadder men. Lane, at all events, who was a simple and candid soul for whom Isaac Hecker conceived a long-enduring friendship, sunk all his private means irrevocably in the futile attempt to establish Fruitlands on a solid basis. To use his own words in a letter now at our hand, though referring to another of Mr. Alcott's schemes, his little fortune was "buried in the same grave of flowery rhetoric in which so many other notions have been deposited."

Lying before us there is an epistle—Mr. Alcott's most ordinary written communications with his friends must have demanded that term in preference to anything less stately—in which he has described his own ideal of what life at Fruitlands ought to be. No directer way of conveying to our readers a notion of his peculiar faculty of seeming to say something of singular importance occurs to us, than that of giving it entire. Though found among Father Hecker's papers, it was not addressed to him but to one of his most-valued Brook Farm associates:

"Concord, Mass., February 15, 1843.—DEAR FRIEND: In reply to your letter of the 12th, I have to say that as until the snow leaves the ground clear, the Family cannot so much as look for a locality (which then may not readily be found), it seems premature to talk of the conditions on which any association may be formed.

"Nevertheless, as human progress is a universally interesting subject, I have much pleasure in communicating with you on the question of the general conditions most conducive to that end.

"I have no belief in associations of human beings for the purpose of making themselves happy by means of improved outward arrangements alone, as the fountains of happiness are within, and are opened to us as we are preharmonized or consociated with the Universal Spirit. This is the one condition needful for happy association amongst men. And this condition is attained by the surrender of all individual or selfish gratification—a complete willingness to be moulded by Divinity. This, as men now are, of course involves self-renunciation and retrenchment; and in enumerating the hindrances which debar us from happiness, we shall be drawn to consider, in the first place, ourselves; and to entertain practically the question, Are we prepared for the giving up all, and taking refuge in Love as an unfailing Providence? A faith and reliance as large as this seems needful to insure us against disappointment. The entrance to Paradise is still through the strait gate and narrow way of self-denial. Eden's avenue is yet guarded by the fiery-sworded cherubim, and humility and charity are the credentials for admission. Unless well armed with valor and patience, we must continue in the old and much-trodden broad way, and take share of the penalties paid by all who walk thereon.

"The conditions for one are conditions for all. Hence there can be no parley with the tempter, no private pleas for self-indulgence, no leaning on the broken reed of circumstances.

"It is not for us to prescribe conditions; these are prescribed on our natures, our state of being—and the best we can do, if disqualified, is either to attain an amended character, or to relinquish all hopes of securing felicity.

"Our purposes, as far as we know them at present, are briefly these:

"First, to obtain the free use of a spot of land adequate by our own labor to our support; including, of course, a convenient plain house, and offices, wood-lot, garden, and orchard.

"Secondly, to live independently of foreign aids by being sufficiently elevated to procure all articles for subsistence in the productions of the spot, under a regimen of healthful labor and recreation; with benignity towards all creatures, human and inferior; with beauty and refinement in all economies; and the purest charity throughout our demeanor.

"Should this kind of life attract parties towards us—individuals of like aims and issues—that state of being itself determines the law of association; and the particular mode may be spoken of more definitely as individual cases may arise; but, in no case, could inferior ends compromise the principles laid down.

"Doubtless such a household, with our library, our services and manner of life, may attract young men and women, possibly also families with children, desirous of access to the channels and fountain of wisdom and purity; and we are not without hope that Providence will use us progressively for beneficial effects in the great work of human regeneration, and the restoration of the highest life on earth.

"With the humane wish that yourself and little ones may be led to confide in providential Love,

"I am, dear friend, very truly yours,